DEAD: Darkness Before Dawn (10 page)

Flipping open her lighter, she ignited the dangling strip and hurled it at the car she had seen the person dive behind. There was a shattering sound immediately followed by a fantastic fir
eball. Her hit had even better results than hoped for as the person came out shrieking with their clothing engulfed in flames.

Kevin did not wait and scrambled to his feet. He and Catie started up the street, not bothering to waste a bullet on the person who looked to be trying to chase them for at least a dozen steps before flinging themselves to the ground. The screams had not faded when six more individuals rounded the corner up ahead. This time there was no question as to which group they b
elonged. Kevin recognized the voice of the one who had been called Jerome.

“Kill those fucks!”

He and Catie barely had time to dive behind a wooden fence as the group opened fire with a barrage of bullets that whistled overhead and ricocheted off the street right behind them. Kevin only had a moment to appreciate the fact that this Jerome had a thick, bushy, black handlebar mustache exactly like Tom Savini’s in
Dawn of the Dead
. Meanwhile, Catie was already pulling out the second of her three Molotovs.

As soon as there was a lull in the gunfire, she lit the strip of kerosene soaked cloth, popped her head up to get eyes on her target
, and hurled the little bomb. She did not stay up to appreciate her handiwork as she saw guns quickly swivel her direction. However, she was rewarded with more than one scream of what she hoped was pain and not simply surprise.

Kevin scooted up against the fence and opened his own pack. He pulled out one of the three precious explosives.

He could hear the voice of Jerome above the screams. “Screw him…he’s a goner. I saw two of those mother fuckers take cover behind that little white fence. You two get across the street and we can catch them in a crossfire!”

Taking a guess based on where he thought he heard the voice come from, Kevin lit the Molotov, struggled to his knees and only had to correct a little just before he threw.

Unlike Catie, he could not help but watch; a decision that almost cost him his life. Jerome was looking right at him and brought the wicked looking weapon at his hip into play and opened up with a spray of fire.

A second later
, there was a ball of flame between them and the chatter of the automatic weapon ceased suddenly, followed immediately by more screams. Catie yanked Kevin down and smacked him on the side of the head.

“Ouch!” he squawked.

“That is a good way to get yourself killed. Can I just take this second to quote you…this ain’t the movies. In real firefights you don’t get to observe your handiwork. You just pray that you score a hit. The best confirmation you can hope for is that the bullets stop coming at you.”

Kevin scowled
, but Catie was already lighting her third and final Molotov. She popped up and saw three figures remaining that were not in flames. She hurled her bottle at the closest, but misjudged the distance and watched as it sailed over the individual’s head. All that managed to accomplish was to cut off any possible retreat.

From his po
sition against the fence, Kevin actually had a good view down the street. He felt his heart flutter just a bit as he caught a glimpse of what he was pretty sure had to be Trent and Heather ducked down low but running across the distant four-way intersection. Of course his next thought was,
Where is Aleah?

Catie popped up suddenly and snapped him back to his i
mmediate situation. She fired off a few quick shots and then dropped back down.

“Hit anything?” Kevin asked.

“No idea,” Catie answered as she swapped out her magazine for a fresh one.

Kevin drew his suddenly puny seeming .22 pistol. He glanced longingly at Catie’s .45 and sighed. Scooting around and getting up to his knees, but still hunched over to maintain his cover, Kevin took a deep breath and then came up firing. Even the sound of his weapon was decidedly weak.

“Can you make a move for that corner of the house by the garage?” Catie asked after letting the slide slam back into place on her pistol. “If you can get there, we can alternate firing at them from the two different positions. I seriously don’t give these idiots enough credit to focus on just one of us. That should give us better odds.”

That sounded like she was making things up to him, but Kevin nodded. As soon as he signaled that he was ready, Catie popped up and sent another several rounds at the last position she had seen the closest of the
ir enemies. Kevin took off as fast as he could; twice he felt something whizz terrifyingly close to his head. It only took a few seconds, but he reached that corner of the house feeling like he had been in the open forever.

Taking a moment to catch his breath and ensure that he hadn’t wet his pants, Kevin peeked around from behind the saf
ety of solid brick that made up the exterior of this house. He saw the rear end of one of the three remaining men sticking up from behind a fallen garbage can of all things. He had no idea what the man thought a plastic garbage can would do as far as stopping bullets…and then he looked down at the pea shooter in his hand and scowled.

“Fine,” he muttered, taking the time to aim. He squeezed the trigger and almost felt embarrassed by the pathetic ‘pop’ the r
esulted. At least that was how he felt until he heard a yelp.

The man behind the garbage can seemed to suddenly forget that he was in the middle of a gunfight and hopped up to his feet grabbing his but
t with both hands. It was comical until Catie popped up and put four slugs from her .45 into the man’s chest.

The man Kevin had identified as Jerome
leapt up and opened up with his automatic. Kevin watched helplessly as the hedge and fence began to disintegrate. Fortunately for Catie, the man emptied his magazine without ever lowering his stream of fire the six more inches which would have signaled her doom.

Catie did not wait for the man to reload, she jumped up and made a zig zagging sprint for Kevin’s position. All he could do was fire his gun to offer some sort of cover. He seriously doub
ted that they even heard his weapon as the cylinder rotated around until it came to an empty casing.

“That was a good shot,” Catie said with genuine admiration. “I seriously doubted your pistol’s ability to even do damage from the range you were at.”

There were a few more exchanges of fire, but Kevin had no luck and neither did Catie. Fortunately, neither did their adversaries. After a few verbal exchanges which mostly consisted of Jerome telling them just how sorry they would be when he got ahold of them, there was a brief silence.

The part that was confusing to both him and Catie were some of the comments when he called them “carriers” and “clap traps”.
Kevin was tempted to shout a few things back, but he knew well enough how those sorts of exchanges usually worked.

On two separate
occasions, an explosion shook the area. It took a few minutes, but eventually a cloud of smoke would rise to give away the location. Both times it proved to be to the north, which made both of them breathe easier since their base and the location of the children was to the south.

At last it looked as if Jerome and his cohort had decided to make a break of their own. Kevin was actually surprised when Jerome popped up and sprayed their location with his weapon so that the other individual could make a run for a nearby house. Both Catie and Kevin waited for the man to make his own move; each had their weapon fully loaded and trained in the general direction.

When he made his break, they both opened fire. From the looks of it, neither got close. The man dove through the door that opened for him at the last second and disappeared.

“Jeez, you’d think at least one of us would hit him,” Kevin spat, looking down at the pistol in his hand like it had betrayed him.

“Moving targets aren’t easy,” Catie said as she hit the release and let her empty magazine drop into her hand.

Kevin quickly told her about having seen Heather and Trent. She seemed to give things careful consideration. Finally she looked up at Kevin.

“This isn’t our fight. We could slip away now and be done with this place. They are obviously in some sort of feud or war with another group…and it has been going on for a while if my guess is correct,” Catie said with a tilt of her head.

“You saying we should just take off?”
Kevin asked with a touch of surprise. “Is this a woman thing? I mean, one minute you are bitching about how we don’t do enough, you aren’t sure if you made the right choice to follow my group, the next, we are all buddy-buddy…and now this? Seriously, I realize that stand-up comics used to do hours of material on women and their inability to make up their minds…but for the love of Pete—”

“What I am saying is that this seems like a war. We are not part of it. This is not a group of survivors stranded and needing help. This is two groups who have some sort of beef with each other. We can cut and run,” Catie stated matter-of-factly.

“Well, I say we go, but we need to take out the two in that house first…they got a good look at us.”

“So?” Catie shrugged.

“So, we don’t exactly move all that quickly with all the children in tow. If we just happen to encounter these folks up the road…it could go bad.”

Catie gave it a moment of thought. It seemed unlikely, but she also saw the logic of not having to look over your shoulder.

“Fine, then we take them out and make a run for it…get everybody packed up and move out as soon as it gets dark,” Catie agreed. “I am going to get up on this roof real quick and take a look around. I want to see if there is anything on the other side of that house. They may actually be trying to get back to the parking lot of the church.”

Kevin nodded and kept his eyes on where he had seen the two individuals
duck inside. Twice he thought he saw the door open just a crack. He wondered why they had not made a break out the back yet. Secretly, he sort of hoped that they would. It was not that he was afraid of them, and he certainly did not like the idea of the potential, however unlikely, that they run in to Jerome later and have to deal with it. Honestly, he was just tired. After all, he had basically been in a coma for the past several days. He was not at his best.

Catie slid down beside him and they went over their plan of attack.
And now, here he sat up against the wheel of the truck. Catie had vanished over the fence about thirty seconds ago. He continued to watch the front door with his last Molotov in his hand and the lighter at the ready.

He heard the crash and a ‘whump’ as the incendiary device broke and created its fireball. He counted to three, lit his and stood up. With an overhead hur
l, he lobbed his at the front door. The added bonus was strictly a matter of coincidence as the door flew open just as his Molotov reached it. The firebomb actually went in the open doorway. A gout of flame spewed out, and seconds later, two figures came out screaming as the flames did their ghastly work.

Kevin almost marveled at how well things had
turned out. Catie vaulted the fence and was sprinting for him, but she pulled up when she saw the two figures writhing in the front yard. At first, he thought that she would go over and do the humane thing; put a round in each of their heads. Instead, she was simply standing there with her head cocked to one side as she watched them suffer. It gave Kevin a chill.

“Holy crap,” a voice panted
, causing Kevin to jump.

Turning, he saw Trent and Heather jogging up. Both of them were giving the two bodies that were still burning and screaming a very wide berth. As it continued, Kevin was no longer sure of his list of ways he did not want to die. He had moved being torn apart and eaten alive by zombies to the nu
mber one slot ahead of dying in a fire…but this was doing a great deal to change his mind as it seemed to go on for way too long.

At last he had endured all that he could and he walk
ed up. Firing from almost pointblank range, he found that his .22 worked just fine for a task such as this. Sliding it into his holster, he still made a mental point to make sure that he snagged one of the better handguns when they got back. For the life of him, he could not think why he had ever thought that a .22 would be any good out on a run. It would drop a zombie from up close, but that was really about all it was good for.

He turned to Heather, “So where is Aleah?” he asked.

“She went back to the kids. We thought that you might want them to be ready to move out. When you guys did not join up with us as planned we decided to wait…until that other group showed up,” she explained.

“Yeah, I guess these two factions don’t get along,” Trent jumped in. “And from what I was hearing, it has something to do with how these folks are immune.”

“What?” Kevin scratched his head in confusion.

“I’m just saying what I gathered from the bits of convers
ation that I overheard…it was very confusing and didn’t make much sense to me,” Trent said with a shrug.

“Well we can worry about that later…or never,” Kevin f
inally sighed. “Let’s get back and make preparations for getting on the road.”